Reflection on creating learning modules for MSTE 5120: Teaching chemistry and physics

Douglas College is planning on offering a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Math and Science Teaching. It is aimed at elementary school teachers in the lower mainland. The proposal for the program stipulated that the courses would be hybrid format and I have taken this as an assumption for the development of the course, although how to divide the activities between the online and face to face activities was considered.

This reflection is divided into three portions – A SECTIONS analysis[1] of the project and then a walkthrough of the two learning modules with reference to the requirements of the 565a assignment and finally future directions.

SECTIONS Analysis

As this is a new program, I have limited information about the students of the program and I am forced to make some educated guesses. Since it is a post-degree program, I am assuming that the participants will be mature learners with self management skills. Also, our existing students have ready access to computers and high speed internet connections[2], so I assume that these students will have these as well and so video and video conferencing could be incorporated into the course.

Preliminary surveys showed that the primary audience for the Diploma is elementary school teachers and this likely means that there will be a range in terms of student’s content knowledge of chemistry and physics as well as technological preparedness. Thus, I felt I needed to assume that the course had to cater to those students who had never taken an online course and may have a phobia of chemistry and physics. Also, my experience has been that some students come to these subjects with quite high levels of anxiety, so I wanted a closed environment for discussion and preliminary work. My intent is to have some of the final assignments published to a class blog (possibly posters, lesson plans or fact sheets).

Thus, ease of use was an important consideration and I felt that using a Learning Management System as the central hub of online activity was suitable as it provides a framework for content, discussion forums and connections to other resources like the digital story I created. I was concerned that using a collection of social media tools (like a blog and social networking tool) might not have enough structure and lead students unfamiliar with these mediums to feel lost or overwhelmed. The program is continual entry, so I cannot assume that students have taken other MSTE courses.

The issues of costs, speed, organizational issues and novelty are related. Douglas College does not have an established process for developing hybrid and online courses, with most development being in the lone ranger mode with some boutique development of media objects.[3] Thus, as the instructor, I feel the most limited resource is my time to both learn the tools needed to develop a course as well as developing the course materials. I suspect that the course will need revision, since this is the first time I have designed a hybrid course, so being able to make those revisions quickly from one year to the next was a consideration in selecting tools, as there will be no dedicated time to revise the course and it will have to happen as part of my regular duties. Douglas College uses Blackboard, so ultimately the work done for MOODLE will be moved to Blackboard to take advantage of the organizational support for instructors and students and longer term, the integration of Blackboard with Elluminate and possibly WordPress. This led me to try to include as much of the assignment and discussion descriptions in the course content as possible and only include titles directly in MOODLE. In terms of novelty, hybrid courses are still novel at the College, so I applied for an Educational leave to take MET courses and this has allowed me to begin work on MSTE 5120 as a project.

The teaching and learning goals for the course are two-fold to increase student’s content knowledge of chemistry and physics as well as to connect this to their classroom practice.  As the course is currently structured, I would envision having weekly student-content interaction with regard to the actual chemistry and physics concepts via suitable readings, an ungraded self assessment quiz to provide students with a chance to reflect on their learning and identify what questions they still have about the topics.[4] The student-student interaction would then involve discussions and assignments that focus on how to apply, or adapt these ideas for the student’s own teaching.

One of the considerations with regards to interactivity was how to relate the online and face to face portion. I wanted to make full use of the online environment and not have it be simply an optional extra resource or activity. Thus, I deliberately scheduled the first lab for week three rather than week one. My hope is that the norms of online activity will be established prior to the face to face labs. I see the online environment being used for student- student interaction in discussion forums and group assignments. The labs would include the traditional hands on activities with specialized or expensive equipment; however, I would also see using some of the time for other activities. For example, giving a receiving feedback on group projects (this is built into the Medical Isotopes assignment). In addition, I imagine using the time while students are working to visit each student and ask them what questions they still have about the content. I normally check in with each student during lab and I would try to make it explicit that the student’s were responsible for generating their questions and knowing what they want to ask.  This hasn’t been set up explicitly in the course yet as the actual details of who will run the lab haven’t been decided (an instructor or a technician or a blend of both). The idea is that the weekly self assessment quizzes would serve as a prompt to help students identify questions. I don’t imagine I would answer the questions directly, but rather provide further questions, hints or direction to help the students.

Course Site

The splash page has lots of white space and two buttons under the image with the course schedule and an orientation link that includes a graphic on how to navigate to the weekly material. I decided not to add a button for learning modules, as I was working in the weekly tab format and I thought a page with links to the 13 weeks would be too cumbersome and somewhat redundant since the tabs are at the top of the splash page.

Because the target audience is teachers and this course could begin in September, I tried to make the first week relatively light and allow students to become accustomed to the tools of the LMS. I included group discussion to allow people to introduce themselves, but contrary to Anderson’s suggestion, I thought it was better to allow students to express any concerns in private via a non-graded quiz.[5] I tried to include the required (3 point ) items from the Quality Matters rubric for assessing course design in my first week, including an orientation button on the splash page that includes a graphic on how to navigate to the weekly content, the purpose and learning objectives of the course, the grading scheme for the course and consistent navigation.[6] I deliberately included the instructor introduction as part of the course – I am likely the only person ever going to teach the course, so I wanted to make it as personal as possible and I intentionally omitted some of the items requested in the “Autobiography” discussion, so I could post there and begin to establish my social presence in the course.[7]

The second week has a module on atoms and includes the “Gulf War Remix” story as an introduction, a reading on atomic theory relating to the “Self Assessment Quiz”, a reading and a general discussion (“Jigsaw”) on adapting an activity for a local classroom and the start of a group assignment on “Medical Isotopes” with groups set up (5 groups and I expect 24 in the course).

I didn’t have a pedagogical reason to program particular items for selective release. I simply hid the second week. As a student, I prefer to be able to see the upcoming modules and get ahead on my readings if I have time, but I can see the problem of having students racing ahead through the course.

Future Directions

My biggest pet peeve at the moment is that when the web pages I created for the course content open, the navigation at the top of page gets hidden and students have to scroll to see it. This may be a result of the setting I used when creating the web pages.   The second thing would be to reorganize into modules from weeks. I can see how this aids in navigation and would allow for fewer release dates if one wanted to hide some of the material.

I was somewhat surprised at how difficult it was to find suitable reading materials on the chemistry content. I checked with Wikipedia and Connexions, but the available materials are at too high a level and many of the popular books (Oliver Sacks’ Uncle Tungsten for example) assume that people know the material without explaining it. I resorted to a commercial textbook, but our institution may not renew our Access Copyright licence, so creating a course pack would be more difficult. I will have to take another look at the available online resources, such as MERLOT.

The largest issue I am trying to resolve is the assessment and assignments for the course. Broadly, I would like students to review the chemistry and physics concepts for themselves and to be able to discuss any questions they have with an instructor during the lab. The threaded discussions and assignments would then relate to teaching the topics and be done throughout the course, rather than tacked on at the end of the course. For covering the chemistry and physics content, I am trying to figure out how best to assign grades and “generate engagement with learning tasks without generating piles of marking.”[8]

One option would be to replace the self assessment quizzes with ones from a commercial publisher, like Mastering Chemistry from Pearson and use an associated text. These quizzes offer immediate hints, and scaffold students through solving problems. They allow custom questions, so I could include reflective short answer questions. The challenge would be to see if the combination of Mastering Chemistry, Mastering physics and portions of one or two suitable textbooks could be bundled together at a reasonable price. The second option, and the one I am leaning towards, would be to require students to create a concept map and submit it to be marked. My experience in ETEC 512 was that this forced me to review readings and try to put together a coherent picture. Either approach could work well, the first lends itself to more quantitative problem while the second is more qualitative, which I feel is more suitable for this course, but I will need to sound out the other instructors in the program to make sure it fits with the larger program.

Finally, the group assignment on “Medical Isotopes” is relatively boring – write 451 words on the topic. I would change it to either creating a poster (students can have them printed for free at the College and take them back to their classrooms) or perhaps create a class blog and have the result posted to the blog so that other instructors can potentially use it and the other materials generated by the students.

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[1] Bates, A.W., Poole, G.; Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education. 2003, Wiley. Pg 75-105.

[2] Douglas College Student Profile and Perceptions Survey 2008, http://www.douglas.bc.ca/__shared/assets/Stu_Profile_Srv_2008_Details55554.pdf, accessed Sept. 16, 2010.

[3] Bates, A.W., Poole, G.; Effective Teaching With Technology in Higher Education. 2003, Wiley. Pg 139-141.

[4] Anderson, T. (2008). Toward a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.) Theory and Practice of Online Learning, Chapter 2 (pp. 45-74).  Accessed online  Nov. 16, 2010

[5] Anderson, T. (2008). Toward a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.) Theory and Practice of Online Learning, Chapter 2 (pp. 48).  Accessed online  Nov. 16, 2010

[6] Quality Matters Rubric, http://qminstitute.org/home/Public%20Library/About%20QM/RubricStandards2008-2010.pdf, accessed Nov 29, 2010.

[7] Anderson, T. (2008). Toward a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.) Theory and Practice of Online Learning, Chapter 14 (pp. 343-365).  Accessed online  Nov. 16, 2010

[8] Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005).  “Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (pp. 8) Accessed online 26 October 2010 http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf